Why Nike’s AR experiment for Facebook Messenger was a hit with its customers

At this year’s F8 conference earlier this month, Facebook announced that brands can now use its Camera Effects Platform to employ augmented reality (AR) with Messenger bots.

Four brands — Kia, Nike, Sephora and ASUS — participated in a closed beta to incorporate this added capability. Kia showed off its Stinger car, Sephora enabled virtual makeup and ASUS enabled a virtual “unboxing experience” for one of its phones.

But Nike’s experiment had one result that the other three — and few AR projects to date — have not yet duplicated.